We've all heard the adage a dozen times: your room is far more important to the sound that you get out of your system than the system itself. While this statement may very well be true, the process of tackling "your room" is far more difficult than deciding what type of receiver or speaker wire you should buy. Welcome to the world of acoustics: incredibly complicated and undoubtedly intimidating. The XTZ Room Analyzer may just be the thing to help get you into this world a little easier.

XTZ might not be a familiar name in the US. The company is based in Sweden and makes a full complement of audio equipment, from amplifiers to speakers and subwoofers. Though they have a limited presence in the United States, the Room Analyzer has quite a few fans, so we were interested in taking a look.

Anyone who has set up a receiver in the last several years has addressed room acoustics, whether they knew it or not. Those little pyramid things you plug into your receiver, that cause weird sounds chirping sounds that may concern your partner or friends that your listening tastes have gone severely off the rails? Those are test tones…and that pyramid thing is a microphone. The brains of your receiver is playing sounds, interpreting how your room is affecting those sounds, and implementing changes to the signals its playing to try and correct for what your room is doing. That's room acoustics!

For those interested in taking the next step, the XTZ Room Analyzer may be your gateway drug. The RA is an all in one kit that contains everything you need to begin gathering your own acoustical data – the very same data that Audyssey is collecting – and use it to truly analyze the acoustics in your room. With very powerful software, and almost limitless possibilities, the XTZ RA can help you move beyond auto-calibration, and help you not only understand what systems like Audyssey are doing, but also help you make changes to your room that will improve your sound far beyond what room correction software is capable of providing.